Better Than Starbucks July 2019

By Better Than Starbucks

The Interview: Simon Perchik & Essay & Five Poems. Featured Poems: Richard Wakefield, Scott C. Kaestner, Tom Merrill. Featured Fiction: Austin Gilmour. Free Verse: Steve Denehan, Brian Rihlmann, Dick Bentley, Joanne Easley, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Catherine Moscatt, John Grey, Carol Barrett, and more. Haiku: Kevin McLaughlin, Joan C. Fingon, Mercedy Howell, Richard Rose, Shreya Narang, Hanoch Guy, Robert Wooten, Ingrid Bruck, Hadi Panahi, and more. Formal Poetry: Jared Carter, Alfred Nicol, Aaron Poochigian, Catherine Chandler, Anna M. Evans, and more. Poetry Translations: Donald Mace Williams, Conor Kelly, and Xe M. Sánchez. International Poetry: Amirah Al Wassif, Jagari Mukherjee, Chandrama Deshmukh, and more. African Poetry: Obinna Chilekezi, and Sa’id Sa’ad, Sentimental Poetry: Sam Norman, J.C. Mari, Claudia Gary, Marcus Bales, and more. Experimental Poetry: Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo, Mark Gilbert, Robin Helweg-Larsen, and more. Flash: Tobi Alfier, Martin Porter, and more. CNF: Dr. Richard Brynteson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359758647

Book preview

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Copyright

Copyright © by Better Than Starbucks. All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Contributing authors retain copyright to their works.

First Printing: ISBN 978-0-359-75864-7

Editor in Chief Vera Ignatowitsch

Founder & Publisher Anthony Watkins

Cover Image: Interior, Morning

by Patrick William Adam (1854-1929)

Three Featured Poems

Editor’s Choice

Formal Poetry

Nothing to Fear

There’s nothing to fear, nothing, his mother said.

She held him, and when he grew too big to hold

she sat beside him, smoothed his brow, and told

him, Nothing in the closet or under the bed;

nothing in the swaying trees that cast

their shadow limbs across his bedroom floor;

nothing in the empty house next door

that stares through glassless eyes as we walk past.

He didn’t hear the strange foreshadowing,

the turn her words would take, but now he sees

the nothing in the empty house, the trees,

the nothing in anything, in everything,

the nothing coming closer year by year,

the promised nothing that he has to fear.

Richard Wakefield’s first poetry collection, East of Early Winters (University of Evansville Press), won the Richard Wilbur Award. His second collection, A Vertical Mile (Able Muse Press), was short-listed for the Poets’ Prize.

Publisher’s Choice

Free Verse

Larry’s Wife & The Cat

She’s looking for someone to dance with, someone who won’t step on her toes,

someone who is in step with her every move,

someone who anticipates her next move

someone who doesn’t exist

so instead she settled for Larry

he’s asleep in his La-Z-Boy

and she’s dancing with the cat.

Scott C. Kaestner is a Los Angeles poet, dad, husband, and barefoot beach walker. Google ‘Scott Kaestner Poetry’ to peruse his musings and doings.

Editor’s Choice

Free Verse

The Belladonna Berry Syndrome

I, too, dislike it . . . — MM

Not sure if why she disliked it

was seeing that the loss

inflicted by compelled transition

from a state of nothingness void of pain

to one of acute awareness

is the cause of all grief.

She suggested after all it was possible

to be interested in it sometimes

for example when it featured

exotic made-up places

where real creatures dwell

and to be a true connoisseur of the art.

Her dramatic monologue Marriage though

where both actors and scene defy belief

does cite poison

the quintessence of the quotidien really

since a chain reaction of tortured deaths

continues as it keeps being swallowed.

Even so, not sure her contempt for it

meant never forgiving the theft of peace

any species of speech denotes

especially when it only seems pitiable

to be trapped in a racked sensorium

completely alone and deviled by dreads.

Poems by Tom Merrill have recently appeared in two novels as epigraphs. His latest book, Time in Eternity, can be purchased from Ancient Cypress Press.

The Interview July 2019

The Interview with Simon Perchik

by Anthony Watkins

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection, and his twentieth book, is The Gibson Poems, published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2019. For more information including free e-books please visit his website at http://www.simonperchik.com.

AW: I have known you as a poet for a couple of years, primarily through some of the poems of yours we have published. I and the entire staff are quite fond of your work, so it seems reasonable our readers probably are too. Given that, I wanted a chance to better introduce you to our readers and find out more about you for myself along the way.

SP: Thank you, Anthony, I am truly honored by your interest in my work.

AW: One of the first things you and I corresponded about was your titles, or your lack of titles. I have run into poets who write mostly Untitled poems. I don’t publish them. To me, a title IS the poem, and what follows are various details and abstractions about that thing, so if a poet can’t tell what the thing is, I usually think they need to rewrite the poem. You on the other hand title almost all your poems with an asterisk. Why do you not title them in a conventional manner?

SP: Since year one I’ve never titled a poem. Not even with an asterisk. That came much later when I read an Italian poet who used the asterisk as a title. I thought that was cool. So I stole it. Truth is, I don’t think in terms of a title. My poetry makes its living in the subconscious and as such has many facets, each often conflicting with the others. A title might be an unwarranted risk, leading the reader to limit the poem to one aspect to the detriment of the others.

AW: You published your first book of poetry about the time I began writing poetry. Over the past 50 years, what has changed for you in your understanding of poetry?

SP: Over the past 50 years my work has become more abstract. My idol is Rothko and I want to write like he paints. Of course, colors, like music easily reaches the viewer’s or listener’s subconscious. Words are a problem; they have meaning. Or do they? The law library is stacked with volumes of recorded litigation on what words mean. In short, they don’t always mean what you think they mean. I practiced law for 30 years and I tell you be careful of words. They can surprise you. So why not give them some room. Or at least use them as art. For instance, I tell you your mother died and you cry. I ask you why you’re crying and you say, Well, you just told me my mother died. Makes sense. If you can read a poem and cry and not know why you’re crying you have just read a great poem. Not knowing why is what gives poetry its power.

AW: In an interview a few years ago, you said, I don’t write about a wagon with five wheels, I don’t like that kind of thing. What does that mean?

SP: I don’t write about a wagon with five wheels is my way of saying I write about the real world. About common every day, every where things. My goal is that when I write a poem with a doorknob in it, my hope is that you will never again open a door without a sense of fear. All my objects are real things.

AW: I understand you write a lot or most of your poems in response to an image. I